II. At the end of these fifty years we find the race still aspiring, still wishing to go forward. The progress that has been made is not something that has been forced upon the race against its will, as members of it are forced to ride in "Jim Crow" cars in the South; it is what the race has wished to do. It is not now, and never has been willing to remain in the condition in which slavery left it. From the very beginning there has been the desire for better things, for enlarged opportunities. And it still has dreams and visions of larger and better things which it hopes some day to realize and towards which it is still pressing. Any one who is calculating upon a retrograde movement on the part of the race will be sadly disappointed, if we may judge from what these last fifty years have revealed of capacity and aspiration on its part. The outlook, in some respects, may be dark, but it is not because of any lack of interest in matters material and educational, or because of any evidence of decay, of the growth of demoralizing tendencies in the race as a whole. There is, of course, in all races an idle, vicious, lawless, dare-devil, reprobate element. And such an element we find among us, especially in the urban population; but the existence of such an element in the Negro race is no more evidence of a retrograde tendency on the part of the race as a whole, than the presence of such an element among the whites is an evidence of a retrograde movement on the part of the white race as a whole. The Negro race makes no claim to superiority over other races. It is simply human like other races. The same evidences of depravity exhibited by other races it also exhibits, neither more nor less. As bad as is a certain element among us, it is no worse than the same element in other races. The trend of the race is not downward, but upward; is not backward, but forward. Moral progress, of course, is always slower than any other kind of progress. It is very much easier to train the head than to train the heart; it is very much easier to develop brain power than moral power. The most difficult thing in the world is to keep men straight morally, is to build up, to develop a strong, upright, virtuous character in men of all races. And this must be borne in mind in estimating the moral progress of the race as compared with its intellectual and material advancement. If progress here has been slower, it is simply because that kind of progress is slower among all races. That the race is responding, in a measure, to the many agencies that are at work for its moral and spiritual uplift can hardly be doubted; nor can there be any doubt that there is an element, and a steadily increasing element among us, that is laying more and more emphasis upon character, upon upright living.